President Issues Executive Order to Release 200 Billion to Inner Cities??!!

If only he had the courage to use his Executive Order powers to do some good for the suffering residents of the inner cities and the rural poor. Danger lurks - there is no time for compromise and beer drinking.  A stroke of the pen on an Executive Order could provide the inner city $200 Billion – or a nice piece of it!!

We should all carefully review what an Executive Order (EO) is and how they have been used and how they can be used as a very effective means to clarify and accomplish the intentions of the laws that are on the books and put the funds to use to benefit ‘we the people’ and further any other domestic programs needed. The President has to hold firm in his desire to address and solve the domestic problems relating to the Health, Education and Welfare of all Americans - not just the middle class – there can be no more compromise!!! You will be surprised what the President can do through an Executive Order, if he has the courage to use this very powerful 'trump card'which is authorized by the US Constitution. It is a game changer, especially when a President is faced with resistance from both sides of the political aisle and all are playing legislative games and fiddling as the economy and communities crumble!

An Executive Order (EO) is a legally binding order given by the President, acting as the head of the Executive Branch, to Federal Administrative Agencies. EOs are generally used to direct federal agencies and officials in their execution of congressionally established laws or policies. However, in many instances they have been used to guide agencies in directions contrary to congressional intent. I posit that the President could use EOs to effectively correct misuse of the TARP funds and influence the use of the $200 billion currently left over from the TARP and any other funding in light of the legislative intent and the emergency domestic financing needs of the people and the nation. Strange how the TARP funds were provided on certain premises and then the game was changed and funds diverted with no explanation. This can be rectified! The President can issue an Executive Order!

Executive Orders do not require Congressional approval to take effect but they have the same legal weight as laws passed by Congress. The President's source of authority to issue Executive Orders can be found in the Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution which grants to the President the "executive Power." Section 3 of Article II further directs the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." To implement or execute the laws of the land, Presidents give direction and guidance to Executive Branch agencies and departments, often in the form of Executive Orders</u>.

Read the following and then ask your representatives to follow the money train! The 200 Billion Dollar train is in the station and getting ready to pull out and looks like the poor will not even get a seat in the back of the train! Remember the song - People Get Ready there's a train a comin? Well this money train is leaving! and many of us do not even know it is in the station!!!!!!!!!!

Will the Black community, will the inner city, will any of Back Street and Black Street get any of the 200 Billion dollars those in the know on both sides of the aisle are now quietly fighting over? Will the President throw a bone to the people? Will the Black Congressional Caucus go to the mattress or will they roll over and play dead? Will something trickle down or will it go the way of the 500 billion or so to save Main Street and pay down the debt Wall Street created?

Dems fight over funds left from bailout 
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29749.html 

Victoria McGrane Victoria Mcgrane Fri Nov 20, 5:01 am ET

Congressional Democrats could be careening toward a head-on collision with the White House over $200 billion in leftover bailout money — money that Republicans think should simply be returned to taxpayers.

The Treasury Department is pushing for fiscal prudence and wants to use the money to pay down the deficit and keep a small rainy-day fund in case of economic catastrophe…

But Democrats are salivating over the possibility of $200 billion in unspent money…..

Reality check: Main Street is code for all the white businesses that missed out on the Wall Street Bail out - it does not include Black Street and the starving poor walking the streets and sleeping under bridges and in abandoned buildings.

Peace, Power and Money flows from collective action. Remember the song - People Get Ready there's a train a comin’ – leavin’? Well this $200 Billion dollar money train is leaving! and many of us do not even know it is in the station.

Email and request President Obama request he issue an Executive Order to provide funds from the financial stimulus to the HBCUs so they can offer grants to the students they were originally charted to educate! HBCUs must be viable as the front line institution to be able to contribute to the education of this generation of graduates.

You can call the White House at 202-456-1111 or send an email to comments@whitehouse.gov . Each of these calls and emails are logged and noted. You can really make a difference.

Write a Letter to Member of Congress. Let your elected officials know what you think. Send it by email or standard mail to members of Congress.

To look up your elected officials, click here.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials

Let us reflect on the above words in the context of the devastating economic conditions we face today. Think about the hundreds of billions going into insane foreign military strategies while our inner cities implode. Many of our great Historically Black Colleges and Universities, most of inner city public schools and our inner city hospitals are failing or failed institutions. The strongest institutions we have in our communities are the Police Departments! Let us take account of the hundreds of billions of dollars the Democrats and Republicans have thrown to the 'hog jaw' of Wall Street. Will there be any funds left for the inner cities; for the poor?

Query: Would Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. have wanted to see 100 million dollars spent on the construction of a 4 acre Washington D.C. memorial using his name to glorify a corporate and political sponsored ‘American Dream’? I firmly believe that Dr. King and if asked, America’s inner-city poor and our rural disenfranchised poor would answer a resounding no!

If asked, the Black and White veterans of the Civil Rights Movement who were there with Dr. King during the summers and winters of hate throughout the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement would answer a resounding no; the souls that were murdered on the path seeking economic, social, and political justice for Black Americans cry from their graves, a resounding no!

Anyone who reads and understands Dr. Kings speech "Where Do We Go From Here?" delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia to the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August the 16th 1967 will see that Dr. King was moving beyond a Civil Rights Dream to Economic Empowerment. He was throwing down the ‘gauntlet’ to what I like to call the Economic Empowerment Warriors. These are individuals, true Warriors, who are not blinded by the glitz nor deafened by the noise or silent about what is going on in America today. Warriors who have and will continue on the paths to Economic and Political Empowerment Dr. King charted and highlighted in this speech.

I have included excerpts from Where Do we Go From Here? The entire speech can be downloaded at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/voice_of_king.htm

I urge you to download all of his speeches found on the site. Share them with family, and friends. It is very important that we understand the content of this most important speech as it provides a time-line and insight into the evolution of Dr. King's mission and methodology.

Where Do We Go From Here?, references history and echoes words from a time when real stand up ‘Negro leaders’ and Black America and our friends took the lead and chartered the course against the evils of racist America and its 20th century slavery without the need of a White board or chairpersons setting the agenda or giving approval or permissions, or endorsements. They seized the time! They drew a line in the sand which clearly showed the nation and the world who was with them and who was against them. More often than not, the line was drawn in the innocent blood of the demonstrators and freedom riders.

The memorial was initially an idea put forth by Dr. King's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. The idea was put forth immediately after Dr. King's assassination in 1968. Alpha Phi Alpha proposed erecting a permanent memorial to Dr. King in Washington D.C. Their efforts did not gather any strength until some 18 years later, 1986, after Dr. King’s birthday became a national holiday. (Historical note: The Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity was the first Greek letter fraternity for Black students. It was originally founded by Black Students at Cornell University 1905-06 because Black students were excluded from joining white Greek Letter fraternities.)

I believe, Dr. King surely would have wanted these funds to go to a ‘Negro’ Black American controlled endowment fund to support Historically Black College & Universities (HBCUs) so they could continue to educate generations of Black American youth to support his vision and continue the fight for the economic, political and social empowerment of the disenfranchised ‘Negro’ Black American.

This current generation of grassroots leaders our President elect, and concerned elected officials must reassess matters and now use their new found power of persuasion to publicly request the millions raised be donated to a Martin Luther King Endowment Fund. Such a fund would assist HBCUs and empower them economically so they could continue to address the educational needs of the Black American students they were created to serve and the Black America Dr. King fought to empower. A 100 million dollar endowment fund established in the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and matched with a 100 billion dollar bailout fund from the new Democratic regime would be a more fitting memorial honoring Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement Veterans that died in the cause.

It is not too late to have the millions raised to date for the granite idol and 4 acre park to be used to establish a Dr. Martin Luther King Endowment Fund which should be controlled and administered in trust, by the HBCUs for the benefit of the "Negro' Black American students these colleges were originally established to educate. You may never get another chance at having corporate America be so generous and make available to you the seed funding for a major endowment. Perhaps the "love" shown the President elect by the White middle class and corporate America will flow to supporting a bail out of our HBCUs??

HBCU students, parents and Civil Rights and grass roots organizations should contact: the Executive Director White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; contact HBCU Presidents and Chancellors; Members, President's Board of Advisers and Chief Financial Officers; HBCU Boards of Trustees; HBCU National Alumni Associations, HBCU Student Leaders, HBCU Organizational Affiliates. We must all demand they lobby the corporate sponsors and the politicians to place the millions raised to date for the granite statute and 4 acre park along with an additional 100 billion in bail out funds in an endowment as the fitting memorial to Dr. King and the objectives of the Civil Rights Movement to empower 'Negro' Black America. Email all the HBCUs alert them.
http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/list/whhbcu/edlite-list.html

The HBCU students and young members of the Black Greek organizations should start 'Stompin the Yard' all across America. Stompin' for Bail Out Billions to go into an endowment fund for the support of HBCUs and their mission to educate our students that can and can not afford tuition; they should be organizing and putting on Stompin' the Yard Demonstrations on the White House Mall and at the offices of Black Congressional Caucasus leaders, politicians, and the corporations that have sponsored this memorial. Grass roots organizations should organize trips to Washington and support a demand that any new initiatives to amend how TARP and new bail out funds are to be allocated include funding an endowment fund in Dr. King's name for the benefit of Morris Brown and all the other HBCUs that are in financial distress. Do not rely on the Congressional Black Caucus to protect the interests of the HBCUs or Black Students! Make the 'Covenant with America' real; make the slogan of ‘change’ a real transformation.

There should be an out pouring of corporate 'love' and Congressional support to provide bail out billions to the HBCUs, and any of hundreds of Black American not-for-profit organizations' initiatives to impact Black America’s inner-city youths' needs for jobs; their needs for training and education so they can participate in the 'green jobs' President elect speaks of and so they can participate in the infrastructure contracts to re-build our devastated inner cities? What is good enough for Wall Street is good enough for Inner City Back Street!

Corporate America understands how endowment funds are invested and leveraged to provide scholarships to pay for needed equipments, to Empower the institution. Is it not better to Empower the HBCUs and benefit 'Negro' Black American students with scholarships for education and training, than to cast 100 million dollars into the dirt or or more billions to Wall Street?

We must remember that Dr. King was struck down, assassinated at the age of 39. He was just reaching his prime and his political, social and economic views were constantly evolving. The Black and White power brokers, liberals and conservatives would have you only remember "I Have A Dream" and sing and dance and join hands and dream on! A dream you are not supposed to ever wake up from!

“Where Do We Go From Here?: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not go to Memphis to dream or sing and dance or have Black Tie dinners. He was there to confront the Economic Empowerment issues facing Black America’s workers. He was there opening The Chapter on Economic Empowerment! A chapter corporate White America dreaded to see opened. It meant we no longer simply wanted to ride in the front seat of the bus - We wanted equal pay and we now wanted to manufacture the buses and own the bus company!

Read the following then ask yourself would Dr. King have preferred an endowment fund be set up and bail out funds be provided to directly benefit, support and empower HBCUs to continue their mission and fight the good fight for those who Dr. King loved and served and to educate great minds to benefit the nation! Take inventory of all the Black the teachers, the doctors, lawyers, men of religion and political leaders that were educated by our HBCUs. It was our HBCUs that were the incubators that nurtured and protected the minds of the proud strong Black men and women that altered the course of history! Many have followed in their footsteps and many educated by the hand of the White institutions have forgotten and neglected the need for struggle and vigilance. Pretending the march is over and the battles have been won! Satisfied with living a dream.

Integration did not mean abandon the great educational institutions that provided for us when all doors were closed! It did not mean to abandon and let fall into decay the numerous Black owned commercial ventures that served us when White establishments would not.

The following has been excerpted from “Where Do We Go From Here?” ( Dr. King's August the 16th 1967 speech).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/voice_of_king.htm

Dr. Abernathy, our distinguished vice president, fellow delegates to this, the tenth annual session of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, my brothers and sisters from not only all over the South, but from all over the United States of America: ten years ago during the piercing chill of a January day and on the heels of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, a group of approximately one hundred Negro leaders from across the South assembled in this church and agreed on the need for an organization to be formed that could serve as a channel through which local protest organizations in the South could coordinate their protest activities. It was this meeting that gave birth to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
... In this decade of change, the Negro stood up and confronted his oppressor. He faced the bullies and the guns, and the dogs and the tear gas. He put himself squarely before the vicious mobs and moved with strength and dignity toward them and decisively defeated them. (Yes) And the courage with which he confronted enraged mobs dissolved the stereotype of the grinning, submissive Uncle Tom. (Yes) He came out of his struggle integrated only slightly in the external society, but powerfully integrated within. This was a victory that had to precede all other gains…..
……In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up (Yes), realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent. (Yes, That’s right) We made our government write new laws to alter some of the cruelest injustices that affected us. ….. We gained manhood in the nation that had always called us "boy."
…..For this, we can feel a legitimate pride. …. the problem is far from solved. The deep rumbling of discontent in our cities is indicative of the fact that the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.
……….let us take an inventory ….
….Perhaps the area of greatest concentration of my efforts has been in the cities of Chicago and Cleveland. …….
….The most dramatic success in Chicago has been Operation Breadbasket. Through Operation Breadbasket we have now achieved for the Negro community of Chicago more than twenty-two hundred new jobs with an income of approximately eighteen million dollars a year, new income to the Negro community…..[Applause]….; there was another area through this economic program, and that was the development of financial institutions which were controlled by Negroes and which were sensitive to problems of economic deprivation of the Negro community. The two banks in Chicago that were interested in helping Negro businessmen were largely unable to loan much because of limited assets. … And I can say to you today that as a result of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, both of these Negro-operated banks have now more than double their assets, and this has been done in less than a year by the work of Operation Breadbasket. [applause]
……….. And finally, the ministers found that Negro contractors, from painters to masons, from electricians to excavators, had also been forced to remain small by the monopolies of white contractors. Breadbasket negotiated agreements on new construction and rehabilitation work for the chain stores. These several interrelated aspects of economic development, all based on the power of organized consumers, hold great possibilities …….. The kinds of requests made by Breadbasket in Chicago can be made not only of chain stores, but of almost any major industry in any city in the country.
…..And so Operation Breadbasket .…. It simply says, "If you respect my dollar, you must respect my person." It simply says that we will no longer spend our money where we can not get substantial jobs. [applause]
……… In Atlanta, Georgia, Breadbasket has been equally successful. …… But here is the story that's not printed in the newspapers in Atlanta: as a result of Operation Breadbasket, over the last three years, we have added about twenty-five million dollars of new income to the Negro community every year. ..
……Finally, SCLC has entered the field of housing. Under the leadership of attorney James Robinson, we have already contracted to build 152 units of low-income housing with apartments for the elderly on a choice downtown Atlanta site under the sponsorship of Ebenezer Baptist Church. ….through this corporation we hope to build housing from Mississippi to North Carolina using Negro workmen, Negro architects, Negro attorneys, and Negro financial institutions throughout. And it is our feeling that in the next two or three years, we can build right here in the South forty million dollars worth of new housing for Negroes, and with millions and millions of dollars in income coming to the Negro community. [applause]
....... we must face the fact, however, that the Negro still lives in the basement of the Great Society. He is still at the bottom, .. In consequence, Negroes are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society.
…… And the Negro did not do this himself; it was done to him. For more than half of his American history, he was enslaved. ….. His unpaid labor made cotton "King" and established America as a significant nation in international commerce. Even after his release from chattel slavery, the nation grew over him, submerging him. It became the richest, most powerful society in the history of man, but it left the Negro far behind.……
Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person.
…..Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing…Negroes have half the income of whites. …There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population. (Yes) [applause]
……In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools (Yeah) receive substantially less money per student than the white schools….One-twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, seventy-five percent hold menial jobs.
……To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. (Yes) Any movement for the Negro's freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried….. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation, no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. .. Yes, I was a slave through my fore parents (That’s right), and now I’m not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave."….This [applause], this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling (All right) by the white man's crimes against him. (Yes)…….
…..Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in to economic and political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness (That’s true) and powerlessness. (So true) Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. ….. the problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change...
……Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. .. we've had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. ….. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times. (Yes) ……
………….Now we realize that … the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. …….We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.
…The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes….
…..we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. …. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle……
.......The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated….
…..And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth. [applause]……
….I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here?" that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) …… one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.
…Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated……
…..In other words, "Your whole structure (Yes) must be changed." [applause] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. (Speak) And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. (Yes) And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. (Yes) [applause]
….Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. (Yes sir)
…Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.
…..Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history (Yes), and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home. ………..